Monday, May 15, 2017

Monstrous Monday - Thrulls and Blood Pets

I originally started playing Magic the Gathering around the time of Mirage. I was living in Muskogee, OK and picked up a deck at KB Toys at the local mall. I can remember essentially buying a booster box of Fallen Empires at the time too, because they had the booster packs on clearance. No one talks about that set anymore and most people weren't a fans of it when it came out (it was the only set that I know of that had multiple art pieces for cards in the same set). I really liked it though. One of my favourite creature types introduced there was the thrull. These were mismatched, stitched-together creatures powered by dark magic. They were weird, gross, and I loved them. I've decided I want to stat out the thrulls for the OSR and since they're weird and twisted, I think Lamentations of the Flame Princess would be a good system for them.

I'm going to start with my favourite thrull, the blood pet.

Thrulls (Overview)

Thrulls are creatures animated from dead flesh. However, the process of creating a thrull is different from necromancy. Due to these variations in animation, they are living creatures and not undead or constructs. While originally created for ritual sacrifice purposes, they have been bred for many purposes, including growing armor to be harvested, assisting ritual magic, combatants, and assassins. While thrulls may have common purposes, each is a unique monstrosity.

Blood Pet

Armor: 12, HD: 1-1 (2 HP),Movement 8, 1 scratch (1 damage) Morale 7

The blood pet is one of the most basic forms of thrull. It's primary purpose is ritual sacrifice. They can be used in any ritual that requires sentient sacrificial victims. In addition, magic-users can perform a short ritual sacrifice using their blood pet in order to regain one use of a previously 1st or 2nd level spell. Once the ritual is complete the magic user has a 3 in 6 chance to regain a 1st level spell and a 1 in 6 chance to regain a 2nd level. This ritual takes 1 round to complete.

3 comments:

Very cool! When I started playing MTG, one of the first things I bought was a pack of 6th edition, and it had a Blood Pet in it. It's almost like an iconic creature to me, even though I know it probably doesn't register much with a lot of players. Great writeup!

I've always loved that picture. It's so ugly it's kind of cute. I wasn't a fan of the 7th edition toad-like illustration. I'm not super familiar with the Ravnican thrulls so if I stat them, it'll be after some research.